Originally Posted by tore

One thing is that people are keen on interpreting and finding patterns in the world around them. Let's say that before you toss a dice, you think "it's going to be a 6" and when you roll, it turns out you were right. That doesn't mean it wasn't a coincidence, but for a lot of people, the idea that the connection between the guess and result is because of some sixth sense is highly appealing.

Sorry Vanilla, but I thought I'd use your dream about your grandpa as another example and hope you are not offended (I have no grandparents left and remember the sadness of losing them). You dreamt your grandfather would die and a little later, it happened. Maybe you've dreamt several times that your grandpa and/or people in your family are ill and die. One day it really happens and you interpret your dream as an ability to see into the future. It's not such a strange thing to dream about and death happens to us all, especially the elderly. I've heard, but I'll try and find a source if you like, that catastrophy dreams about death and accidents are very common. So, when an accident happens, depending on the nature of the situation, there could be a fair chance you've dreamed about it.

For me, I remember dreaming f.ex that I've been in a car accident. Because I wasn't in a car accident within a "short" time space after that dream, I haven't interpreted it as a premonition .. but if I had been in a car accident short after, maybe I would. The point is that if you would dream of such things regardless of what the future looks like, then these dreams are not really premonitions. They just look like it when they coincidentally pair up with real life circumstance.

I also believe people also tend to mentally "shave off" the parts of their premonitions that don't fit reality. Let's say you dreamed that your grandpa was lost at sea, but then he died of cancer. You could still interpret your dream as a premonition by stripping it down to what matters - a death - although the circumstances around his death in the dream versus real life were completely different.

Originally Posted by tore

When I was a teenager, I used to read fortunes with a deck of tarot cards (still have it). With tarot cards, you don't necessarily just tell a future, you also tell a person their influences from the past and the present, fears and so on. When I did this to people, I was usually right on the money, often to the point where they were scared because it was so accurate. However, when I tried reading my own fortune several times in a row, I also felt that the cards were right over and over agian, more often than not. But, there was the occasional blooper.

A strong component in why they worked so well is that the interpretation of the cards are actually quite vague and people are almost eager to believe in them. For example, I might get a card like the devil and tell someone that something has come between them and another person, something which is splitting them apart. They will then take that information and mentally search for something in their lives which they can attach it to. For example, if they have a boyfriend which is going away, they'll apply it to that. If they've had a row with one of their parents, they'll apply it to that. If someone died, they'll apply it to that. For every card, it's almost always possible to find something and so people end up basically doing much of their card reading for you. You just help them down a mental path they construct themselves and then finally give them a fortune reading based on the cards, but rooted in what they've told you.

I think if people were more aware of stuff like this, how we are prone to thinking and interpreting stuff and how vulnerable we are to suggestion, more people would be sceptics.